Best to Laugh: A Novel

by Lorna Landvik

  It was the last birthday present I was to ever get from him, and even though we never spoke of it, I knew it gave my dad pleasure seeing me wear the locket every day. I’d still be wearing it, but to my everlasting shame and regret, one night after a keg party, I woke up to find it gone.

  I HAD PLANNED on spending the rest of my lunch hour at the Beef Bowl or browsing the aisles of JJ Newberry’s, but I was bummed out after seeing Francis and thinking of my Dad, and having lost the taste for Chinese food or dime store junk, I skated back toward Beat Street Records, the hot wind blasting me in the face as I slalomed around the inlaid stars and upright tourists.

  24

  “WHAT ABOUT THAT PLACE?” asked Maeve, pointing.

  “Looks good to me,” said Solange. “Okay with you, Candy?”

  I nodded; my senses flooded.

  We were walking along Olympic Boulevard, a street whose shop signs were written in Korean characters and underneath them, what I could read, their English translations.

  “Korean Bar-B-Q!”

  “Nam’s Liquor Bar!”

  “Jung’s Pharmacy!”

  While there were white, black, and Hispanic people on the street in Korea Town, they were a minority amid the people who looked like my mother, who looked like me.

  “You all right, Candy?” asked Solange.

  “It’s just so weird. I have never, ever been around so many—” I trailed off, not having the words.

  Solange laughed. “Of your people? Imagine how I felt when I first went out to Compton after having grown up in Fresno.”

  “Or me,” said Maeve. “I went to dance school for years, but it was only when I went into a gym with barbells that I felt like I was home.”

  Noticing the look Solange and I exchanged, Maeve laughed.

  “Okay, but it was kinda like what you’re talking about.”

  Flanked by my friends, I was steered into Kee’s Bar & Food, and after the hostess told us there’d be a slight wait, we headed toward the bar.

  “WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND?” Solange asked the bartender as we straddled the red leather barstools.

  “What’s the occasion?” asked the young Korean, in unaccented English.

  “We went to this club on Western for open-mike night,” said Solange. She tipped her palm toward me. “See, my friend here is a comedian and we were going to watch her perform.”

  “Really?” said the bartender.

  “Only the sign on the door said, ‘Closed for remodeling,’” said Maeve.

  “But we still want to celebrate,” said Solange. “And because Candy’s mother was from Korea, we thought this might be a good place to bring her.”

  I sat hunched like a cretin, hands tucked under my thighs, embarrassed and yet stifling an urge to guffaw.

  “My mother’s from Korea, too,” said the bartender with a smile. “So’s my father. Where was your mom from?”

  “Seoul,” I said. “But I . . . I don’t know a lot about her. She died when I was little.”

  He nodded in sympathy before asking, “Ever heard of Soju?”

  In a choreographed move, Solange’s, Maeve’s, and my head moved from side to side. It was all the answer the bartender needed.

  “Now, because you’re at a bar and I’m serving you,” he said, placing three shot glasses in front of us, “this is a moot point. But if you were at a table, with friends or relatives, you wouldn’t fill your own glass. It’s against tradition.

  “Take your glass,” he instructed next, “and hold it in both of your hands. That’s a sign of respect.”

  We did as he advised, and holding a green bottle with Korean characters on the label, the bartender filled our shot glasses.

  “What’s your name?” asked Solange.

  “Bill. Now, usually people drink this in one shot. In fact, you can even call out, ‘One shot!’—it’s sort of like, ‘Bottoms up.’ If you don’t think you can drink this all in one shot, you can call out, “Pan shot!” which means ‘half-shot.’ So what do you think?”

  “One shot!” I hollered and guzzled down the drink.

  “One shot!” echoed Solange and Maeve, both of them mimicking my shudder when they swallowed their drinks.

  Bill looked at us approvingly and held up the bottle again in invitation. The three of us shook our heads, with a certain amount of force.

  “If we drink any more of that, we’ll need to hire a rickshaw to get us home,” said Maeve. Her eyes widened as she swiveled on her stool to face me and then Bill. “Oh geez, was that a stupid thing to say? Because I didn’t mean anything, I just thought because we were in Korea Town—”

  “Ladies,” said the hostess, approaching us, “your table’s ready.”

  “Perfect timing,” said Solange.

  AFTER SCANNING OUR LAMINATED menus, crowded with photographs, the lines and dashes of Korean characters and their English translations, we ordered several dishes and as we waited for them, I told them how I was reminded of my grandmother.

  “She used to take me to this Chinese restaurant in downtown Minneapolis—it was about the only place she knew I could see some Asians.”

  The Nankin had big tasseled menus, rice paper wall hangings, and hostesses in traditional Chinese dress, and we considered ourselves very cosmopolitan as we made clumsy stabs at Subgum Chow Mein or Beef Broccoli with our chopsticks.

  “Didn’t they have any Korean restaurants there?” asked Maeve.

  “None that we knew of,” I said.

  “What surprises me,” said Solange, taking a sip of the tea that had been delivered, “is that this is your first time down here. Like I said, when I got to L.A., it was such a relief; I mean, there were whole neighborhoods, cities where black people were in the actual majority. Didn’t you want to rush down here to be with your own people?”

  “If I wanted to be with my own people, I’d probably rush down to Little Scandinavia, if there were such a place.”

  “Really?” said Maeve. “That’s who you relate to more?”

  “That’s what I grew up with. That’s what I know.”

  “So you don’t feel Korean?”

  “Feel Korean?” I shook my head. “No, I look a lot more Korean than I feel Korean.” I doodled on the tablecloth with my fingernail. “But the way I look doesn’t really match.”

  “Match what?” asked Maeve.

  “The me inside.”

  “Candy,” said Solange, “it’s the rare person whose outside matches up with who they are inside.”

  “I’ll bet yours does,” said Maeve.

  Solange’s laugh was big and true. “Oh, right. On the inside, I feel like I’m the finest—I’m talking Lena Horne in her youth; the smartest—Barbara Jordan testifying before Congress; and the wildest—Angela Davis rallying the troops—woman to walk this earth. Does that match up with how I seem on the outside?”

  “No comment,” I said, regarding my friend with her carefully processed hair, who wore a prim, round-collared blouse, anchored with a tied grosgrain ribbon.

  “I get what you’re saying,” said Maeve. “The me underneath this doesn’t match this.” She flexed her biceps. “The me inside is a blobby little baby, with no muscle mass at all.”

  “We’re all blobby little babies inside,” said Solange. She took a sip of tea, studying me over her cup.

  “What?” I said.

  Tilting her head, Solange’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Did you know the club was going to be closed tonight?”

  “No! I was excited! Excited that you were going to see me perform.”

  “Since you neglected on purpose to tell us about the first time,” said Maeve.

  “Are you ever—”

  “Here we are,” said the waitress, and I silently thanked her intrusion as she set on the table steaming bowls and plates filled with bright vegetables, swirls of noodles, piles of meat, and we happily, and audibly, ate for several minutes.

  “Oh my God,” said Maeve in between bites of dak galbi. “I love this
stuff. Did your mom cook like this, Candy?”

  “That’s what my grandma tells me, but I don’t really have any memory of it.” I spooned onto my plate some of the spicy chicken and noodle dish Maeve was lapping up and waited for the usual wash of sadness to come over me. I sat back in the booth, surprised.

  “Wow. I don’t know what it is about this place, or you guys, but usually when I talk about my mom, I feel like crying, but right now I don’t.”

  “That’s good,” said Maeve, passing me a plate of barbecue spareribs. “I used to not be able to talk about my mom without feeling like I wanted to punch someone in the face. Now I only want to pinch them.”

  Her words hung in the air for a moment, like a scent we were trying to identify.

  “My therapist says that’s progress,” said Maeve.

  “My mother and I get along great,” said Solange, once we had settled into a post-laugh relaxation. “Except that she’s constantly bugging me to get married.”

  “I’m sure that’ll happen,” said Maeve, “when the right guy comes along.”

  Solange shrugged. “The right guy could come along and I’d be totally uninterested. It’s the right girl I’m waiting for.”

  In the silence that followed, I wondered how to respond, and I know Maeve was doing the same.

  “Girl?” I said finally. “Don’t you mean woman?”

  The unflappable Solange seemed, for a change, flapped.

  “Then it’s okay with you?” she said, her voice small. “Do you still like me?”

  “‘Like you’ in what way?” asked Maeve, planting her big chin on her curled fist.

  “Yeah, are you coming on to us?” I said. “Because if you are, I have to tell you—and I think I speak for Maeve, too—I could never date someone who wears grosgrain ribbons as an accessory.”

  Maeve shook her head. “Why would I want to date my second grade teacher?”

  Solange stared at her plate for a long moment, tugging at one of her inflamed ear lobes.

  “Thanks,” she said finally. “I’m glad you know. My mother still doesn’t, and it kills me.” She let go of her ear and slumped back in the booth. “Whew.”

  “Whew’s right,” I said. “And I thought I was the one who had a hard time letting people in.”

  “We do what we do to protect ourselves,” said Maeve. “But lately I’ve been thinking secrets do less to protect us than . . . to stifle us.”

  Solange and I looked at her as if she had just sung “Edelweiss” in a voice purer than Julie Andrews.

  “I know, I know,” said Maeve, laughing. “I’m smarter than I look.”

  25

  “LOOK AT WHAT MY COUSIN SENT ME.”

  “Greetings from Ravenna!!” Solange read aloud. “(See pic of it on other side!)”

  “Is she serious? She really thinks you don’t understand the concept of a postcard?”

  I shook my head. “Read the rest.”

  In a breathy voice, Solange brought to life Charlotte’s childish handwriting:

  “Got a couple hours in port so I thought I’d write to tell you I’VE FALLEN IN LOVE!!! Cray’s his name, and he’ll be coming home with me, helping me to turn the apartment into a LOVE SHACK!!! We’ll be getting in on the 30th and you have my permission to use my car to pick us up! Call you when we land!!! XX, Charlotte.”

  “You know what that means, don’t you?” I asked.

  “That your apartment’s going to turn into a love shack?”

  “Exactly,” I said, leaning back in my office chair. “And how much do you want to bet that I won’t be welcome in it?”

  IN SYMPATHY WITH MY LOUSY MOOD—AND because everyone else was out of the office—Solange told me I might as well leave early.

  “I’ll hold the fort down while you go pout,” she said. “Which I thoroughly endorse, by the way.”

  With my roller skates crammed into my backpack, I dawdled my way down Hollywood Boulevard. At the Broadway Department store, I held out my wrist at the fragrance counter, accepting a spritz of a new perfume called Star Power!

  “If I smell like it, does it mean I have it?” I asked the spritzer, a woman who in her white coat looked like a glamorous doctor. Her response was a pitying smile.

  I bought a roll of Necco Wafers at JJ Newberry’s and while looking in the window at Samuel French, the bookstore that catered to Hollywood historians and those determined to make Hollywood history, I saw out of the corner of my eye a gaunt figure shambling by.

  “Here,” I said, impulsively handing Slim the candy, and while he accepted it as easily as a runner taking a relay baton, he made no eye contact, said nothing.

  At the cosmopolitan newsstand on Las Palmas, I passed a guy in a Tyrolean hat who was reading Der Spiegel and was standing in front of the newspaper section, when I was tapped on the shoulder. I assumed it was by the beefy cashier who permitted browsing, but on a limited basis, subject to his stopwatch.

  “Hey Mayhem!”

  “Hey to you,” said the scrawny guy with the purple mohawk. “What’s got you so hypnotized?”

  “Oh, I’m trying to figure out what paper has the best rental listings. I think I’m going to have to leave Peyton Hall.”

  “Bummer. I’d say you could move in with me, but right now I’m crashing in my sister’s den, which doesn’t thrill my brother-in-law—a total douche, by the way—I mean, the guy’s favorite band is White Snake!”

  “Help you with anything?” asked the cashier, folding his big hairy arms across his chest.

  Mayhem’s voice was as sweet as the cashier’s was not. “No thanks, but I appreciate the offer.”

  He angled his arm and I took the crook of it, and under the squinty-eyed observation of the cashier we walked like dignitaries along the length of the newsstand.

  “Can you believe that a-hole thought I was a shoplifter?” asked Mayhem after we’d turned the corner back onto the Boulevard.

  “I don’t know that he thought that.”

  “Well, he should have!” With a gleeful cackle, he pulled the latest issue of Crawdaddy from under his loose coat.

  “Geez, Mayhem.”

  “What? There’s an article I really need to read.”

  “You’re lucky you weren’t caught because—” I didn’t expand on what punishment the cashier might have meted out, distracted as I was by the sound and fury of a battling couple charging up the street.

  Following my gaze, Mayhem asked, “Who’s that?”

  “My landlord. And his wife.”

  I couldn’t quite decipher what the pair was saying to one another, but it was obvious from their flailing arms and dark faces that they weren’t discussing where to go for tea. Jaz grabbed his wife’s arm, and it was when she shook it away that their conversation became audible.

  “Bastard!” said Aislin. “Get your fucking hands off me!”

  “You don’t tell me when to take my fucking hands off you!”

  “Let’s cross the street,” I suggested, too late.

  “Hey!” said Jaz, stumbling toward us. “Hey, look who’s here, our little subletter! En garde!” He lurched forward in a clumsy thrust, like Robin Hood after one too many flagons of mead.

  “En garde,” I said with a weak wave of my hand. “Hi, Aislin.”

  “I say,” said Jaz, lifting his sunglasses off his face to give Mayhem an exaggerated once-over. “Is this little piece of shit bothering you?”

  “Jaz!” said Aislin. “For Christ’s sake!”

  “No, I’m not bothering her, “ said Mayhem, and mimicking Jaz, he lifted invisible sunglasses off his face. “But, I say, I’d be happy to bother you.”

  “I’ll bet you would, you little punk,” said Jaz, but as he staggered toward Mayhem, Aislin grabbed his arm, forcing him to take two clumsy steps backward.

  “Oh, never mind.” Realizing he was in no condition to strike a blow, let alone land one, Jaz clasped his hands to his chest. “I apologize. I apologize for my boorish behavior. That better, Aislin?�
�

  His lovely Irish wife, who reeked as much of alcohol as Jaz did, said nothing with her mouth, but her eyes were telegraphing all sorts of profanity.

  “So let me make it up to you,” said Jaz, with a deep nod of his head. “Be our guests this evening. Come and join us.”

  “Jaz,” said Aislin, “let’s go.”

  “Yes, let’s go,” said Jaz. “Let’s all go.”

  “Go where?” asked Mayhem amicably.

  Seeking better balance, Jaz replanted his feet in a wider stance.

  “I am inviting the two of you to join us at an exclusive club, a club at whose doors many clamor—”

  “For Christ’s sake, Jaz!” said Aislin, pulling at his arm.

  “Please tell me you’re not Scientologists,” said Mayhem.

  There were often recruiters in front of the Scientology building on the Boulevard, asking passersby if they’d like to take a free personality test. Not especially thinking my personality needed testing (or grading), I’d always ignored them.

  Jaz laughed. “Hardly. Plato’s is much more exclusive and a lot more fun.”

  “Are you talking about Plato’s Retreat?” asked Mayhem.

  “Right-o, bright boy.”

  “Jasper, come on!” said Aislin. She yanked his arm with a socket-separating force and hauled him away like an irate schoolmarm. Half-turning as he stumbled alongside her, Jaz gave a jerky wave, and Mayhem and I watched as they reeled down the Boulevard.

  “Holy shit, Plato’s Retreat!”

  “What’s Plato’s Retreat?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding me? It’s a sex club! A place for swingers.”

  I stared at him, and the expression on my face must have matched the shock I felt because Mayhem tipped back his serrated-hair head and laughed.

  “Look at me,” I said quietly. “Consorting with shoplifters and swingers.”

  “Well, Candy,” said Mayhem, taking my arm. “You’re not in Milwaukee anymore.”

  “Uh . . . Minneapolis.”

  I SPENT THE MORNING of Charlotte’s arrival doing housework, and after making the bed I folded my clothes into a pile and set them on top of the bed. I had taken all my stuff out of the closet and the dresser and now had no idea where to put it. Would Charlotte let me stay on her couch—at least for the night? But then what? Another night? And after that?